"Performance-based" Homeschooling

I was commenting to a friend recently that if there is anything with costumes, re-enactments, or performances, either by my own children, or even better, full grown adults, we seek after these things! In other words, WE'RE THERE! I laughed and said, "Really, we follow a performance-based curriculum."

Well, the truth is, we don't "follow" any "curriculum." But whatever we do, we try to see how often we can throw on a costume and act it out.

I mentioned in an earlier post my husband and I having the discussion about what we remember from our public school appearance. Well, that is a part of what we remember. We remember anything we were costumed for. And it plays well into the natural strengths of my kids: "imagination and play." It seems like a fantastic reason to homeschool: we have the time and energy to insert or adventure into all THIS sort of learning.

There was a suggestion I design a whole "Performance-based" curriculum. If I ever get tech savvy, perhaps I'll share a video on how to cut a costume or post a few of the plays and skits we've written. But I think the whole point is to use your own imagination and go crazy on whatever seems the most engaging or exciting. So here are my tips.

#1 - A stage is fun. Yes, we have a stage at our house. In fact, there is a "stage" on every floor. On the main floor, it's just in front of the fireplace because that is where the couch faces. But in the basement, our school/play room has a "stage" with CURTAINS!

In fact, the stage is made by the presence of curtains. And I'll tell you how we came by that. At Ikea there are wires and hardware for mounting to the wall said wire for hanging, you guessed it, curtains. We bought the set which spans about 7 feet and mounted it to 2 walls dividing off a small bump out from the rest of the room. If you don't have such a floor layout, you may be able to use a corner. Anyway, the "curtains" are just 2 brown flat twin sheets which can be purchased without other bedding at Walmart for around $5 each. In fact, I have a collection of sheets bought there in various sizes for backdrops for our performances. I might recommend buying the sheets before you mount the wire to ensure the sheets reach the floor, lest the kids be disappointed in short curtains for the stage. (I'm sure sewing and fabric would do the trick too. I just don't sew and try to avoid fabric stores.) Oh yes, Ikea also has clips  (like the ones pictured in this link) you can attach to your "curtains" which can be hooked on to the wire. I recommend the kind that don't need to be threaded on. Because ours hook on, I can put the curtains up for the stage in less than one minute and take them down fast too. Because of the pulling of little siblings and friends less used to our "stage," the sheets are mostly kept, clips on, folded in the closet. (The wire is permanent, but an inch away from the ceiling and very inconspicuous.)

#2 - An Audience is a must. I spend a lot of time watching the spontaneous performances of my daughters. They draw heavily for their material from performances they have been to see, and we try and hit a lot. But otherwise, I also try to arrange for official "audiences" for anything my kids have spent time on. I started a few clubs (click to read about them in detail) to this end - so when we're sharing, via a costumed presentation what we've learned about Vikings, or Ancient Israel, or Helen Keller, a bunch of people are there to clap at the end. When the clubs fall through, we invite friends from the neighborhood over.

And performing is part of our holiday traditions. (Click to jump-start out of the box thinking for the holidays.) The obvious is the nativity at Christmastime. We also try to put on a play for Thanksgiving (our first was about Native Americans and pilgrims, roughly, but after that one, we have had a lot of fun adapting stories into plays) and the kids do a skit for St. Patrick's Day.

(While chatting with my friends about this, one shared a fabulous idea for another easy venue: family dinner! Her boy had finished Moby Dick, so the family enjoyed a themed meal, while he, in costume, told them all about it. PERFECT book report!)

#3 - Costumes can be EASY. In our toy closet are two dress-up bins out of which come most of our costumes. We have a blue bin for boys and a pink for girls. As girl dress-ups are more obvious, I'll only say we love hand-me-down church dresses. We keep all styles, and when they are too big, all the better. 

Boys can be trickier, but the nice part is, guys have been wearing pretty much the same thing all throughout history. (I know that is a HUGE generalization, but not as huge as it might be if you count out the nobles.) So old t-shirts are our friends. I made my son his Indian pants out of a large, brown t-shirt. And his dress-ups contain many t-shirts with the sleeves cut off for tunics. (He cuts holes in the sleeves and uses them for masks.) We also make sure dad's old dress shirts find their way to his dress-up bin. And old sheets for turbans and togas, etc. We have a few lava-lava's which we drape in various ways for capes and cloaks and "skirts" for periods before guys were wearing pants. Finally, one essential piece which we'll be needing to replace soon: knickers. (My skinny kids have never been good at keeping pants up that don't have the adjustable elastic straps at the top. But I saved the size 2T black knickers my mom gave my boy as part of a church outfit, and he STILL wears them anytime knickers are appropriate. Which seems to be a lot.)

Lastly, we like to add pieces of greater authenticity by hitting venues where there are GROWN-UPS in costume! (The local Mountain Man Rendezvous and the Renaissance Faire are our two favorite for guns, bonnets, snoods, corsets, coon-skin caps, etc.)

So by easy, I guess I mean no sewing, because I don't sew. But if you are lucky enough to HAVE that skill, your kids will be the ones mine covet. :) (Though I've heard that glue guns can do wonders, so watch out world! Our costumes may just make a leap into gorgeous sophistication!)

Those are my tips from OUR performance-based education adventures! Leave a comment and share what your kids do, for whom, and how, so we can increase our own "repertoire"!

Hubby's Reason to Homeschool: An Expanded Definition of Education

I am part of a yahoo group which networks homeschooling families where I live. (Amazing resource!) Anyway, one mom posted a quote from the book,  Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon's
Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander, M.D. "The ascendance of the scientific method based solely in the physical realm over the past four hundred years presents a major problem: we have lost touch with.our consciousness. it was lost to our secular Western culture as we became increasingly enamored with the power of modern science and technology. For all the successes of Western civilization, the world has paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence- our human spirit."

She added,  "I do think our traditional educational society does not value what cannot be seen or proven. We have been taught that there are certain "experts" who know best how to teach and assess our children. Not only do many, many people believe that, but they think that they can tell if learning is happening based on the same judgment scale. It is so flat and one-dimensional."

My response is here:

That is one of my husband's favorite things about homeschooling - that we can educate our kids about their souls, their inner workings, about valuing their feelings and intuition. In essence, he loves that in OUR definition of being well educated, we CAN (and do) include mastery of the unscientific or difficult to measure. 

We hope our kids turn out to be smart in traditional ways too, but we know well plenty of people who are who have made a mess of their lives, and even injured their capacity to be productive members of society because, while being amazing at "school," they were sorely lacking other skills. Some are completely disconnected from a sense of right and wrong. Others can't make a decision without enough "facts" when there simply weren't enough "facts" available, so they failed to act because they couldn't feel which course of action would bring the most happiness. Many have ruined their own happiness by obsessing over the past because they lacked the skill of letting go and living in the present.

There aren't curricula, generally, for this type of learning. It is difficult to measure and nearly impossible to conjure up a contrived test for these skills. But life DOES administer very real tests. As a parent, I want to observe when my kids "pass" those, and show as much (more?) excitement about those accomplishments as I might a high score on a science test. I'm sure there are parents who send their kids to public school who do this. But we love that in our home, these accomplishments can be recognized in the same context as academic accomplishments, and therefore, FEEL equally weighty to our children.

Being Amazing and Math Discoveries

My dear older daughter is amazing. I'm glad I can think that, and say it in all seriousness. She was a screamer as an infant, difficult as a toddler, and let's just say that many people who know her now would not be surprised to hear either.

So I have been less in touch with her amazingness in various phases of her childhood. (Other words I might have used to describe her were high-need, moody, difficult.) Some of those words may still apply, hence my gratitude to ALSO know she is amazing.

I homeschooled my oldest son because I wanted to keep him close. If my older daughter had been born first, I might have been relieved to send her away, but knowing now how homeschooling can meet the needs of a broader spectrum of personalities and learning styles, I was delighted to keep her with me too. I always said if she went to school either she'd break them (and I didn't want her living with the labels those who buck the system, even of a kindergarten class, sometimes get) or they'd break her. And that would really be the greatest tragedy of them all! Because she is amazing!

So I'm back to the thought I began with. Most recently I've thought this as she rattles off to me math facts she is computing in her head. Before you are too impressed, you should know they are basic addition and subtraction. Nevertheless it is amazing to me for a few reasons.

First, these math fact rattling sessions are entirely initiated by her. One day she happily announced, "Mom, 5+5=10."
"Very good." I encouraged, assuming it was a random and singular announcement.
Then she told me, with growing enthusiasm, "And 5+6=11. And 5+7+12, and 5+8=13...." (she went on for a few more facts.)

I was amazed that she was right, in the first place. (This is a girl who may still not count to 20 in English without a mistake - she does better in Chinese, oddly.) I was amazed that she was computing in her head, simple though the computations were. And I was amazed, mostly, by how excited by all of it she was. It was like she was experiencing some thrill of cracking a numeric code that, perhaps, hadn't been cracked before.

This was weeks ago. These math fact rattling sessions continue. Always because she brings them up. Always lasting until she is done impressing me. She has done subtraction. She has added and subtracted by more than 1. When I ask her how she knows so much, she explains her reasoning and it is sound. I'm more astonished that it is hers entirely. I didn't ever explain that if 5+5+10, then 6+6, adding one more to each five, must add 2 more to the answer, and therefore be 12. But this is what she explained to me, just last night.

So not only am I marveling at HER, but that the idea of genuine, spontaneous, child-led learning DOES occur without the poking, prodding, and pleading of an adult. I'd read that this was so. I'm so glad I believed it enough to step back, this time, and trust the theory. And I'm relieved that by so doing, she gets to experience the thrill and joy of figuring "all this" out by herself.

With her older brother, we were drilling math facts by her age. Before I gave up. Before I thought, "he doesn't get it, or isn't interested to know that 2+4 will always be 6, and so why am I making the both of us miserable trying to convince him?" (He did get it later, and is doing fine on his own math journey.) She is the personality that wouldn't even tolerate the attempt to drill and grill, so we never went there. And yet, without patronizing rewards or instruction, she is driving her own discovery and understanding of math. That is amazing to me!

(As a final humble note: my older daughter is almost 7. She would have completed first grade if she were schooled, and therefore, none of the facts she is "discovering" are beyond what she might have already been told and tested on in school. But these facts, these ones she can't wait to tell me, they are HERS. She owns them. They delight her. She has residual excitement about them - that if she can figure out this much, the rest of the code is likely within her grasp. Of course, she hasn't said those exact words, but that confidence is in how she shares these facts with me. THAT doesn't necessarily come with an A on the year-end test. But I'm so SO glad it's hers.)

Reason 274: Imagination and Play

This event transpired in 2011 and my record of it is below.

I'm sure it's happened to most homeschoolers. A well-meaning relative begins to quiz your kids to make sure they aren't falling behind their peers in school, or simply falling behind the expectations of the one doing the quiz.

My 7 year old was getting the quiz from my father on our last trip to Salt Lake. He was being asked about his schooling activities. Of course, my dad was using all the words we never utter: arithmetic, social studies, history, literature. So my boy said we did none of that. Surprised, I'm sure, dad questioned, "So what do you DO all day!?" My son thought for a moment, then answered, "Mostly imagination and play."

Had I been there for any of this exchange (my dad told me about it later) I would have been doing damage control all the way along, explaining to my son arithmetic is math, telling dad we cover social studies and history with Culture Club, etc. But then surely I would have missed my boy's simple report on how he spends his time: imagination and play.

I LOVE that this is what he feels he does all day! I love coming to find him to start some part of our learning for the day and discovering him playing with his sister, or mumbling dialogue, deep in the realms his mind has created. I sneak off and tell myself it can wait, and it does, and we always find time to work things in later.

This isn't why we began homeschooling. I really should begin making a numbered list of all that we love about homeschooling, however. Number 274: giving my children the gift of time in their childhood for their imagination and play. 

(adding that with this blog, finally the numbered list has begun)

Beginning the list of 2000

This is just the beginning....

I am a mother of 4. My oldest is 10 and has been homeschooled since preschoool, so one might say I've been homeschooling for approximately 6 years. But does that count? I don't know. I remember when all the other moms were sending their kids off to preschool and I thought, "Well, as I want to homeschool, probably a good start would be to NOT send him away." And that is how we officially "began" homeschooling.

Of course, anyone who has been homeschooling for more than a few months quickly realizes all parents homeschool until they don't. Until they outsource their kids to learning institutions, public or private.

But how did I come to opt to NOT outsource? The first part was, I just LOVED my little guy! I became a mom at 26 and was THRILLED about it. I had my share of the new-mom struggles, namely balancing my old semblance of a fulfilling life with the realities of my new life. A successful day went from a long list of check marks on a to-do list and feeling like I improved my personal performance to getting enough rest when the baby slept, AND getting a shower, AND getting anything else done. And that was a successful day, the stars for which might not align more than once a month.

But my boy was my buddy. We did everything together, went everywhere together. And after 3 years, I couldn't picture life without him. So when he is 3, and I'm thinking, "I'm going to send my baby off in less time than he has been alive to be away from me for 4 hours in a row!" I just couldn't bear the idea and decided to call the concept off.

Sort of. Actually it wasn't such an abrupt choice, and not all tied to the apron strings. I think they played a part. But my husband and I had discussed the education of our kids practically since we'd begun dating. It likely came up because I pursued my own unique path when it came to higher education and employment - I was a professional ballerina for 4 years, was dancing when I met my husband, and had never attended college. So even from date one ("So, where do you work?" "At Ballet West") we were talking about the life experiences that had served us, and what was gained and lost by getting a piece of paper stating you had finished with the programs of a particular institution.

After having kids, the discussions became more detailed. We shared what we remembered of school (we both attended public school), what we liked, what shaped us. We came to realize we wasted a lot of time there. We were both naturally academic students, but neither of us felt we learned most of what we used on a regular basis in school. (Which isn't to say those things weren't taught, but we learned them from our parents, or by experience, or on our own. The classroom "instruction" had very little to do with it.) We wanted our kids to enjoy a richer, deeper, fuller education than we had. And to waste less of their lives too!

We talked private schools. We wondered when the time came if we would be able to afford them. My husband once suggested, "We could homeschool?"

"No," came my quick reply. "I want a life. And I want to have more than one kid. You can't have either and homeschool."

So a year or so passes and I'm feeling, "I don't want to send my kid away!" and homeschool feels a little more plausible. But still SO DAUNTING.

Hubby and I read books together. I'm sure in one of his health kicks, we picked up a book about living off the land and read about homesteaders in California who homeschooled their kids who wound up running the family's livelihood and getting into Ivy league schools. Incidentally, both parents had been college professors. WE didn't have those qualifications. But then, we weren't so set on Ivy league either. And what we read of these kids' life experiences - the deep, the rich, the full - REALLY sounded like what we had in mind.

So at this point I started where everyone wondering, "Am I really going to try this? Am I nuts?" starts. I found other homeschoolers and started asking questions. My aunt, who I'm not especially close with, homeschooled. I asked her what her draw was. She said, "To be an influence in my children's lives for a little longer." I liked that answer. Especially the part of me hyperventilating about sending my oldest to kindergarten in two years.

I wend to some informal homeschool mom meetings. (I didn't know then homeschoolers and formal meetings seldom cross paths.) Anyway, I was so impressed with these moms. They were intelligent, engaged, dynamic. I thought they seemed up to their elbows with the meaty things of life. I'd never been in such a group of women where there was such an absence of fluff in the discussion. I loved it.

And they had great wisdom. Influential quotes that encouraged me:
"Homeschooling rarely fails. If it doesn't work, people just send their kids back to school."
"You can always try."
"Homeschooling doesn't have to take the same time school does. You can teach everything in school in much less time, and then go about your life."

Well, I was sold. And so I began the homeschooling journey. I WAS able to keep my boy with me a little longer, but that one decision, made years ago, more significantly has deepened and enriched not only the education of my kids, but of myself. It's blessed me in my role as a mother. And fulfilled my dreams of a happy family.

My list of what began as a small handful of largely trivial reasons to homeschool has grown. I've loved the process and adventure growing the list has brought. I'm excited to share it with you!